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particularly in the Central Sierra Nevada, has introduced a high degree of complexity to 

 the planning and execution of forest ecosystem management and protection programs. 

 The ability of the Forest Service to reach the goals for the partem and distribution of 

 vegetative types and condition, including the late serai stage, old growth forest ecosystem 

 is dependent upon cooperation and collaboration among landowners. The treatment of 

 fuels must involve collaboration with the state, counties and local communities and 

 agencies so that goals are agreed to. Without this essential step and consistent execution 

 and communication by the cooperatnrs, any efforts will be fragmented and goals will not 

 be achieved. 



Goal setting must be focused at the local level to succeed and may differ among 

 geographic areas because of the conditions that exist there. Failure to coordinate 

 programs at the local level could result in continued high-risk development that would 

 continue to complicate protection and reduce flexibility of application of methods in 

 ecosystem management. Land values could be affected negatively. Thus, a mix of 

 methods to deal with the fuel buildup will be required to achieve acceptable results. Trie 

 use of prescribed fire by itself would fall far short of accomplishing reduction of fuels 

 and other management objectives such as output of forest products. The advent of more 

 prescribed fire will result in more area restrictions on public use and may affect the 

 quality of recreation experiences, resulting in changed patterns of public use. More 

 frequent presence of smoke in populated areas could influence public acceptance of the 

 use of prescribed fire, even with public education because of the health issues involved. 

 Clean air laws may be violated. Nor will the re-introduction of prescribed fire guarantee 

 that large, damaging wildfires will no longer occur. A case in point is the August, 1996 



Rogge Fire on the Stanislaus National Forest. It was started by lightning and over several 

 days, burned 21,000 acres with a suppression cost of nearly 8 million dollars. Nearly all 

 of the Rogge Fire burned within the area burned by the Stanislaus Complex Fire nine 

 years ago in 1 987. The Rogge Fire escaped initial attack during a period of multiple 

 ignitions and scarce resources because of commitments to fires in other areas. The fire 

 burned through about 2000 acres of tree plantations established following the 1987 fire. 

 Other types of fuel treatment may have protected these plantations until they were more 

 tire resistant. 



